News
Flexera Software’s InstallShield 2014 Release Introduces New Support of Cloud and Virtualised Installations, High-DPI Displays and Touch Devices, and Agile Development
May 2014 by Marc Jacob
Flexera Software, the provider of Application Usage Management solutions for application producers and enterprises, today announced the launch of InstallShield 2014. The new release simplifies installations for cloud and other complex Web/server applications, enhances support for high-DPI displays, supports accelerated release cycles common in agile development processes, and makes testing more efficient by automatically provisioning virtual machines.
Automated Cloud and Web/Server Installations via Microsoft Web Deploy
Microsoft Web Deploy has quickly become a pervasive packaging format for web applications. However, Web Deploy does not include a customer-facing interface for deployment and its ability to bundle prerequisites, runtimes, and machine configuration tasks is limited. InstallShield 2014 is the only installation development solution to solve this challenge, enabling faster and more efficient installation of web applications to Microsoft® Azure™ and Microsoft Internet Information Service (IIS) using Microsoft Web Deploy. Now customers have the flexibility to deploy web applications to their choice of infrastructure—to local machines, to remote servers in the datacenter, or to Microsoft Azure in the cloud. InstallShield also supports deployment of Microsoft Azure SQL Databases, enabling customers to install databases to the cloud and support hybrid cloud scenarios by deploying database scripts directly to Microsoft Azure SQL databases.
Enhanced Support for High-DPI Displays and Modern Touch-Screen Interfaces
Since Apple® first introduced Retina displays, the PC market has responded with even higher resolution displays and support for touch interaction on desktops, laptops, and tablets. This new generation of PC devices presents challenges for users when interacting with software that doesn’t account for Windows DPI scaling behavior. The installation of these applications can be error prone and negatively impact the customer’s installation experience and, as a result, their first impression of the product. InstallShield 2014 helps eliminate this problem by ensuring all InstallShield project types are DPI-aware, creating an optimized user experience for customers installing software on high-DPI and touch-screen devices.
“We use InstallShield to simplify the installation of a complex application suite with both Web Service Configuration, Windows Service installation and management,” said Matthew Gerega, Manager of Product Development at Four Rivers Software Systems. “We count on Flexera Software to understand the evolving needs of installation developers and to deliver enhancements reflecting our real-world requirements. InstallShield 2014 promises to be another outstanding release to support our business.”
Help End Users Keep Up with Accelerated Release Cycles
Agile development practices are being increasingly implemented, and as a result many application producers are delivering more frequent product releases. To keep up, users are looking to simplify how to find, download and install new versions. InstallShield 2014 Suite/Advanced UI installations can address this desire by automatically checking the Internet for the latest version of a setup any time the installation is run.
Installing new versions is also challenging when there are multiple instances installed on a single server. InstallShield 2014 adds support for developing upgrades that are able to detect the presence of multiple instances on target systems, and provides end-users with options to select which instance to upgrade.
Provision Virtual Machines for Installation Testing to Improve Productivity
Application producers need to quickly test the installations they have created. The rise of virtual machines has made it possible for developers to access custom prepared test environments, but the provisioning of the virtual machine and staging of the application for testing still requires several manual steps. InstallShield 2014 now supports provisioning virtual machines from the InstallShield Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for testing installations – reducing testing time and eliminating manual steps by automatically provisioning virtual machines. Developers can choose test image snapshots, power on virtual machines, and stage setups directly from the InstallShield IDE automatically at build time, or on demand. This new capability supports VMware® vSphere, VMware Workstation, and Microsoft Hyper-V®.
